Never Be Late Again

One mom road tests advice on how to get kids out the door on time in the A.M. Here, what worked (and what didn't)

In a stroke of serendipity, I heard clinical psychologist Thomas Phelan, Ph.D., creator of the 1-2-3 Magic parenting program, on the radio, and I decided to see if he could help. He recommended a souped-up version of the "natural consequences" that Lindsey Whitaker had made her son face when he'd worn flip-flops in the snow.

"If I do a good job of explaining it to you," Phelan said, "it should make you very nervous. Because everything you're doing  worrying about how long your child takes to pack her lunch, cajoling her to leave ridiculous things like giant sticks at home--you don't do that to be mean, you do that because you want to be a good mom." I got misty-eyed for my sweet, well-intentioned self. "But it's backfiring," he added. Ouch  the harsh truth. He noted that my efforts were making Daisy more dependent and oppositional (e.g., she was slowing down and needing help with her lunch; she lost the prized detangler) just when we wanted her to be self-reliant and well mannered.

Phelan's program was stunning in its simplicity. We had to tell Daisy that getting to school on time was now her responsibility. So we presented her with her own alarm clock, set it for 7:00 A.M., and explained that this would give her an hour and 15 minutes to get ready for school. I would continue to brush her hair for her, and her dad would still walk her to school. But other than that, everything was now up to her  and we weren't going to nag her.

The next day, I was up at 5:45 A.M. Daisy got out of bed at 8:50, 20 minutes after school started. She ran into the dining room wild-eyed and said, "I have a math test!"

I felt the intense urge to write a note to the teacher about a fictitious doctor's appointment. My husband told me to lock myself in our bathroom. I did. I heard some shouting and a lot of crying through the door. I turned on the water to drown it out. When my husband returned, he reported that Daisy had sulked but not wept all the way to school and that he hadn't said anything to excuse her lateness. And that after he'd kissed her goodbye, she had hitched her backpack high and marched with grim, soldier-like determination into the school office.

Phelan said that it was crucial to let Daisy experience the anxiety associated with oversleeping and its consequences. He made an analogy to the common dream in which one is falling off a cliff. "You wake up before you hit the ground because you panic," he said, "which is incompatible with sleep." So, he said, once Daisy was responsible for getting herself up and to school, fear of oversleeping would actually help her awaken on time.

I felt utterly sick about inducing panic in my daughter, but Phelan promised that her feeling a little anxiety now would save her from feeling a whole lot later on.

The second day of the experiment, Daisy hit her snooze button three times. She clomped out of bed at 7:30, accused me of being "a very, very mean mom," packed Entenmann's Little Bites and carrots for lunch, and arrived at school 10 minutes late.

The third day, she was on time. And she has been every day since.

We haven't stuck strictly to Phelan's (or any single) approach. We've cobbled together a strategy that works for us: I feel that Daisy does suffer separation anxiety in the morning, so I started making breakfast again  nothing fancy, just toaster waffles or a bowl of cereal with sliced banana  because it allows us all to have five minutes together. And about once a week, usually when she can't find an unbelievably important homework sheet, I slip up and bark, "Daisy, look at the time!"

But my evil, shrieking twin is no longer on full display during those early hours; instead, I'm usually sitting calmly with coffee, reading the paper. More important, Daisy, now a middle schooler, has taken on new responsibilities and gained maturity.

"Your mom wakes you up?" I overheard her say to a friend recently. "I outgrew that stage a while ago."

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